A young man puts his money in a cookie jar with the promise to save.
After a period of time he needs cash so he "borrows" the money from the cookie jar. In order to make his actions right, he puts an IOU with interest in the jar.
The young man paid the IOU plus interest to the cookie jar and he put more money in as well.
After another period of time the young man needs cash again. He didn't like paying IOUs plus interest to himself. So he created an idea where he could "borrow" the money with a special IOU that paid interest with additional IOUs.
The young man really liked his idea and kept doing this year after year. He had a cookie jar full of IOUs that always paid interest in IOUs. He knew exactly how much he owed himself because of the IOUs.
Moral of this story: If the young man ever pays off his IOUs, he is going to be very rich.
Silly story, isn't it? Surely the young man would have been aware of the consequences of his actions, wouldn't he?
The above story illustrates exactly what has transpired over the years with the average American citizen. The only difference was the average American allowed his elected representatives from the political parties to do it for him.
It doesn't get any more simple than this story.
The question should not be, is there a problem? You can see there is a problem.
The question should be, how can we fix the problem?
If we pay off the IOUs plus interest, we are victims of double taxation.
If we honor our collective responsibility to provide for our elderly without paying off the IOUs, we are still victims of double taxation.
If we don't provide for the elderly, what are we?
Anyway, now you know the truth.
Having been informed the truth, we need to ascertain solutions, actions, costs, ideas, etc. Now is the time for responsible Americans to think and act.
Possible Solutions:
- We must make sure that no current or future politician ever "borrows" surplus funds from any of the 150 Trust Funds again.
- We must make sure that any surplus funds from any Trust are never "invested" in US Treasurys or any other type debt whereby income taxes are used to retire the debt.
- We need to remove the $90,000 cap regarding payroll taxes. All earned income should be subject to the payroll tax.
- The tax cuts and the prescription drug bill were the President's two principal domestic priorities during his first term. Together, these policies will cost at least five times as much over the next 75 years as the Social Security shortfall (if the tax cuts are made permanent). In other words, the President's domestic policy initiatives will have resulted in fiscal problems much larger than the problem that he now says he wants to address. This conclusion also holds true if costs are measured into eternity. Solution: remove the tax cuts and scrap the prescription drug bill.
- We can also strengthen our long-term economy by investing more in the workforce and voters of tomorrow: our children. Every child in America deserves a chance to receive the very best education possible.
- America keeps losing jobs. Outsourcing benefits corporations and the wealthy few. We need to impose severe restrictions upon any corporation that takes jobs overseas. Remove tax credits for this activity and impose extreme taxation on any profit made overseas.
- We can not continue to impose our values upon other countries by military force. We can not continue to re-build every country and ignore our own America. We can not continue to act as the world's policeman. We can not continue the rhetoric concerning our homeland security. We need to bring our kids home. We need to create action that secures our national borders. We need to build and maintain our national infrastructure which creates additional income taxes.
In closing, there are numerous resources and options available to us and we must determine the best action possible for our future. The tax holiday for the super rich and multinational corporations has to end.
We Americans for some odd reason have always enjoyed making our elected officials more than mere individuals. We seem to love the egos, the super rich, the celebrity status. We need to quit that activity and devote more time, effort and energy to being good Americans.
Mother America, your fellow citizens and your children will appreciate that.